Motorola sold 100 refurbished Xoom tablets without wiping data

In a step that could have had serious privacy implications, Motorola sold around 100 refurbished Xoom Wi-Fi units in United States that were not cleared of previous owners’ data. Company had come clean yesterday and advised the users, who returned their Xoom between March and October 2011, to get a free complimentary membership of Experian’s ProtectMyID Alert to mitigate any risk to its customers.

Motorola has announced that approximately 100 out of a batch of 6,200 Motorola Xoom Wi-Fi tablets that were refurbished by company may not have been completely cleared of the original owner’s data prior to resale. The tablets in question were resold by Woot.com between October and December 2011. We haven’t heard about any consumer privacy mishaps so far because of this error.

Those who performed a factory data reset prior to returning the device are not impacted. While, I am sure many of you already know this and do it, you should keep in mind that if by any chance you are returning your Android device back to the manufacturer or retailer, make sure to backup your data and do a hard reset to remove all the traces of your private information from the device. Normally, in all Android devices, you can perform hard reset by going to Setting>Privacy>Factory Reset. Do not leave anything to the manufacturer, someone might make a mistake like Motorola.